


An Eye for an Eye

by magpiespirit



Series: Partners in Time [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Biting, Body Dysphoria, Cherub Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley's Name is Crawly | Crawley (Good Omens), Gen, Humor, M/M, Possessive Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21521383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpiespirit/pseuds/magpiespirit
Summary: Crawly worries he might eventually have competition in humans. Aziraphale assures him, in a roundabout way, that it will never happen.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Partners in Time [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1505432
Comments: 13
Kudos: 107





	An Eye for an Eye

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place sometime after chapter one, but before the fight at the river in _Approaching Terminal Velocity._ Technically you can probably read this on its own and extrapolate from context clues; all you need to know is that Crawly has decided Aziraphale belongs to him when the stars are out because they're both bad at being people and having emotions and cannot perform affection appropriately.

He doesn’t like the way Aziraphale looks at them.

The humans are so dull, hardly worth attention when someone as interesting as _Crawly_ is standing _right next to him,_ but the angel seems so taken with them, so careful with them. He tells them to be not afraid, but he’ll break Crawly’s arm with no mercy — and all right, maybe he deserved that one, but _really,_ so did the human who committed murder — it isn’t fair. He belongs to Crawly, doesn’t he? That’s the rule. God gets him during the day and Crawly gets him at night, or at least, whenever they’re in the same area at night, which happens less and less now that humans are spreading out so quickly. 

There’s a bonfire, some kind of moon phase celebration Crawly can’t begin to understand and Aziraphale seems uninterested in joining. Crawly’s assignment is to monitor the enemy and report back with intel. Aziraphale’s assignment is to inspire the leader of this particular group to worship the Almighty in a more direct way. Crawly ought to get in his way or something, but why bother? This isn’t the kind of assignment that will change the world. These people don’t matter. What matters right now is the way the stars reflect in the awkward angel’s eyes, all the colors gone dark under the night sky, and the quiet sense of camaraderie.

“It’s so lovely,” says Aziraphale wistfully, looking out at the small encampment. Enclave. Whatever it is. “They have no guidance — no proof, no _stories,_ since they were separated from the others so early — but they looked up at the moon and decided there must be some kind of celestial Mother. They know Her and have faith in Her even if they don’t have the right information.”

Crawly makes a noise in the back of his throat. It’s something between amusement and irritation. He waves his hand and replies, “Nah, it’s not faith, it’s fear. It’s not beautiful, it’s stupid. They didn’t understand the world around them so they made up a new story. They got lucky on the details, but that’s all it was: luck.”

“Don’t play the cynic. It’s such an ugly look on you,” chides the angel, sounding unconcerned.

“It’s a great look on demons,” Crawly protests, falling to the ground at the angel’s feet. It’s an invitation, like always; Aziraphale doesn’t generally respond well to the spoken kind, but he often does that thing where he mimics what other people do, like he’s still learning to be a person. 

Sure enough, he sinks to his knees as well, a tight, controlled movement as opposed to Crawly’s graceless, boneless sprawl. “I don’t recall mentioning other demons.”

This is the funny thing about Aziraphale. He forgets to paint with a broad brush, like the other angels do. Crawly is not, fundamentally, very different to his fellow demons; they have the same master and the same aims, and his methods might be different, but that’s only because he’s not a complete idiot like them. Still, his angel holds him apart from other demons, as though he _is_ different, as though he’s _special._ Of course Crawly will do all he can to encourage that behavior, because this angel is _his_ and Crawly deserves to have what he wants, but it’s funny, is all. Aziraphale is so smart, but he’s also quite stupid. _How_ that works, the demon hasn’t figured out yet, but it works to his advantage, so it doesn’t matter, not really.

He scoots close and winds his arms around Aziraphale, which the angel tolerates. Crawly knew Aziraphale would tolerate it, because that’s just how it goes. Somewhere deep down, Aziraphale _must_ know that he belongs to Crawly, at least at night, under the stars. There’s no other explanation for how he allows himself to be handled by someone he could, and probably should, crush under his heel. Pushing his luck, Crawly nips at Aziraphale’s shoulder, just because.

“I’ve told you before, I _will_ bite you back,” says his angel.

“Liar.”

“I don’t lie.”

Crawly snorts. That’s _adorable._ “You do. Satan may be the Father of Lies, but you, Aziraphale of the Eastern Gate, are the only angel who’s ever lied to God and gotten away with it.”

“How did you find out about that,” Aziraphale exclaims, twisting in Crawly’s clutches. Like Crawly would let him escape! 

“Oh, I was there,” Crawly answers, smiling and leaning his face against his angel’s shoulder. It feels nice on the skin of his cheek. On nights like tonight, he can almost pretend they’re not enemies, that Aziraphale doesn’t need to wear his star-marks to be his. “I was hiding, but I saw the whole thing. I hope you understand that I will never let it go. I will always have that to hold over your head.”

“The point of a secret weapon is to keep it _secret,”_ the angel tells Crawly, in a tone that says clearly he understands what’s happening and isn’t happy about it.

“It isn’t a secret weapon. It’s just an uncomfortable fact that I know about you, and nobody else knows about you, and could cause problems for you if I told somebody important. But don’t worry: I won’t. They wouldn’t believe me anyway. I’m just going to use it to irritate you when you least expect it.”

“Hmph. Better me than the humans, I suppose.”

They watch the humans dance for a while, Aziraphale with something like joy on his face, and Crawly with growing resentment. The dancing is beautiful; they can move so well. They have the kind of mastery over their bodies that comes of being born into them, which Crawly has never achieved (and probably will never achieve). He is a serpent who spends his time in bipedal form, and while this _is_ his body, it does sometimes feel funny, like it has too many limbs, or at least not enough flexibility. Crawly can’t dance like that.

It’s almost funny to imagine Aziraphale, whose stiffness and awkwardness is unparallelled, trying to dance with them. But the image just makes Crawly a little angry, because it leads to _other_ images. His angel loves these humans so very much. He reveres them in a way that is usually reserved for the Almighty — it’s borderline blasphemous, is what it is, and what if he decides he wants to...to take up with one of them? Or two? Or a lot? Anyone would jump at the chance to have him (Crawly knows that this must be true, because he has _impeccable_ and _unquestionable_ taste). What if Aziraphale takes _human lovers?_

No.

That must not happen. Crawly won’t have it.

“They’re so beautiful,” he murmurs to the angel, suggestion in his voice. He can’t just _ask,_ because he knows the party line, but he can tease out the truth if he goes about it the right way.

“They really are. I can’t bear to disrupt their moon festival. They practiced _so hard,_ and their belief is _so powerful._ I can feel their love for Her _radiating.”_ Aziraphale sighs happily and pats Crawly’s thigh. “Thank you for not causing mischief tonight. I’d hate for you to discorporate and miss this.”

Half of Crawly wants to go set the encampment on fire just because his angel said that. The other half, inexplicably, wants to curl up and bask in the warmth of those stupid words. He feels like hiding, but there’s nowhere to hide, so he just makes a noise in the back of his throat and mutters, “I don’t have any angelic nonsense to thwart yet. I’d thought you’d want to be down there with them.”

“Ah — it’s not my place,” says his angel carefully, which means that yes, Aziraphale would _like_ to be down there, but somebody told him not to. And now Crawly finds himself in the frustrating position of having to _agree_ with Heaven. “It’s all right. We can admire them from afar.”

This is his opening! “Do that often, do you? _Admire_ from afar?”

“I hope you’re not suggesting what I think you’re suggesting.”

“It’s a fair question. You like them. You wish you could be with them. It’s not a big leap to think you might want to be, on them? Inside them? Er. Well.” He feels stupid and hides his face in Aziraphale’s shoulder, so his voice is muffled when he adds, “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Oh, my dear,” Aziraphale says, obviously amused (and Crawly will always find it strange, he thinks, that this angel can have obvious emotions at all), “That is disturbing, not to mention forbidden.”

_“Disturbing?”_

“Yes. Humans are so _small._ And the eyes…”

“What about the eyes? You’ve got them too,” Crawly points out, raising his head again now that the moment to mock him has come and gone without the mockery. He doesn’t comment on the size thing, because really, humans _are_ small. Their souls have no heft to them. They’re practically babies. 

Aziraphale gestures at nothing with the hand that is not presently on Crawly’s thigh. Presumably, it represents something on the celestial plane that Crawly isn’t familiar with. “They haven’t got enough of them. I don’t mean to be shallow, _truly_ I don’t, but there is something unsettling about these shapes. It’s one thing I wish I could change — I might have caught you in the Garden, had I not been confined to the...eerie form. Oh, I shouldn’t say that about Her favored creations! But it’s true all the same.”

Crawly isn’t sure if he should be offended or not. On the one hand, his angelic form was very humanoid, and Aziraphale might as well be saying that he was ugly before the fall. On the other hand, Crawly is also a _serpent,_ and his priority sense is scent; for all he cares, someone could be the most beautiful being in all of creation, but if they taste/smell bad, they are just ugly. And aesthetic beauty is hard to qualify for beings who wear meat shells for the sake of convenience.

No, offense is unnecessary. Still, he grins wickedly and says, “The humans think your true form is as ugly as you think theirs are. _That’s_ why they run screaming.”

“I didn’t say they’re ugly!”

“Of course. Just _unsettling._ Oh, and _eerie.”_ Crawly digs in his nails a bit, because he hasn’t done it in a while and he likes it when Aziraphale gets annoyed with him. That little huff and the cluck of the angel’s throat is _such_ a delight to evoke. “Admit it, you think they’re ugly.”

“Just not my type. And I don’t know why you insist on goading me, you foul creature, I have no interest in...that sort of thing. I think you just like to make me uncomfortable, and that’s very naughty of you.”

“It’s my job to be naughty,” he half-lies into his angel’s ear, relieved at the words. Aziraphale has no intention of taking a human lover. That means Crawly doesn’t have to go against his policy of nonviolence and run off the humans he’s _supposed_ to be _corrupting._ He bites the lobe, dragging his front teeth along the front of it just for a moment, and enjoys the startle. His angel always has the funniest reactions, and for some reason, he never bothers to retaliate when Crawly’s just annoying him personally. On a whim — maybe a fantasy, although he’ll never admit it — he adds, “I think you like that.”

“Of course I do,” Aziraphale replies plainly, turning his head to meet Crawly’s gaze with eyes that are absolutely dripping with starlight. It trips up the demon for a moment, until the angel finishes, “I can manage you when you are naughty. If your job was to hurt them, I would have to hurt you a lot more often than I do now, and _then_ where would we be?”

Somehow, that manages to be both flattering and degrading all at once, but that thought gets shoved to the side in favor of the sudden surge of endorphins, the heat in Crawly’s chest, the unbearable and wonderful _fullness_ when this delicious aberration of an angel leans in, breath playing over the skin of his neck—

_and bites back._

“That should teach you,” Aziraphale says with satisfaction, but Crawly, through the warmth, vaguely suspects he has learned the wrong lesson.

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't be like Crawly. He's being cute here, but this mentality is not cute at all. For that matter, don't be like Aziraphale either. They're both so creepy right now. Like kids playing with live steel.


End file.
